


Mosaic

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Ficlets, Gen, M/M, Other, Short, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:36:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 8,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2739443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of ficlets and drabbles, some prompted by tumblr friends, that are not specifically connected. each chapter is a different one-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kisses - Vivienne

_for uxoriosis_  
  
  
One for the medallion of the Blessed, metal warmed at her chest.

One for the bottled potion, astringent and heavier than it appeared.

One for the cool forehead, that would never wrinkle, never fever, never turn to her again across the pillow.

Which? Which were the wasted kisses, though?


	2. Darkness - Cole

_for beckalizard_   
  
  
  
Three hours to sunrise, soon he’ll stop, though it’s only browsing, borrowing, not to break but to balm. _Just because they don’t see you doesn’t mean it isn’t theft_. But thoughts aren’t blueberry pastries, and they’re softer in the dark.


	3. Faith, The Moon - Cassandra

_for historymiss and melliferan_

  
  
She watched Leliana launch two ravens, eyeing their trajectory until they parted for different shores. A soft shape in the daytime sky caught her attention, a figure that seemed larger, closer, atop Skyhold’s ramparts than it had ever been in her youth. “Look, the Kingsway moon,” she said, pointing. “It is a small comfort that some things will never change.”

Leliana removed her gloves. “And those that do?”

Cassandra looked for the birds, but they had flown so far so fast. She replied, “There is hope to be had in the trying, at least.”


	4. Swelter - Krem

_for[flutiebear](http://tmblr.co/m-DSJT42kb6E2RzR0mSASdA)_   
  


  
Bleary, Varric pushed a pint across the table, picked up his quill and paper, and fixed Krem with a serious look. "Awright, smelliest job."

"Ooh tough."  Krem took hold of the mug, thoughtful. "Gotta be the hot springs, sulphur mostly, east of Minrathous. We were hired to keep eyes on a Tal Vashoth commander. She liked to wash up in the shallows."

"Worth it?"

"Yes and no," said Krem.  He drank deeply, long lashes dipping, a crooked smile slanting behind the rim. "She had an ass like sculpted marble, that one. But those springs. . .we smelled like sweaty cabbage farts for a week."


	5. Sleepless, Bathtime - Blackwall/Cadash

_for[momochanners](http://tmblr.co/mTFZpdX7SDdIdEtMENADGhw) and [middlemarching](http://tmblr.co/m56_B1izvUt-5UX5AAGoY5Q)_  
  
  
  
He is awake when the tentflap opens, and dawn’s pinkish glow creeps in from the canyon.  She’s quiet, and wet from a bath.  She smells not of a giant spider’s guts, or Skyhold’s pure runoff, but of the greenwater oasis.  Her eyes are somewhere else, even while they’re on him.  
  
“What is it?” He gathers damp hair away from her shoulder.  
  
“I lost a ring, a family ring, somewhere in that mine. I think.”  
  
Sometimes it’s easier when he can just tuck her back into the warm place against his chest. But she’s wet, unmoving.    
  
He starts to say, “It’s just-”  
  
“Yeah.” Her hair falls a little more in her face, water drips onto the bedroll. “Just a thing, a symbol and all that.  I know.”    
  
But it isn’t, or wasn’t, or could never be.  His shoulder pops and his ankles crack as he gets up.  She has the morning sun at her back, just beyond the tentflap, but he can still see how little her mouth moves when she says, “What are you doing?”  
  
“Getting dressed.” For once, he can find his socks exactly where he left them. “Some. . .some things are worth the effort.”


	6. Frilly - Blackwall/Solas

_for[drparisa](http://tmblr.co/mYFQXRejvXjzfiq4qa9u5kQ)_  
  
  
  
It was about the scent as much as the taste, the texture and the afterburn, in the Fade or anywhere.  Pleasures were not to be missed, however small.  However frilly. That anyone remembered that fact with such specificity, much less a soldier, momentarily confounded Solas.  
  
“What an unexpected delight. Thank you.”  
  
The petit fours in the violet box smelled of citrus-liquored genoise and cardamom ganache, their tiny geometric forms enrobed in silk-thin fondant, topped with gilded, candied laurel.    
  
Arms crossed, Blackwall nodded as if to solemn orders. “I got some for everyone, so there’s no need to be, you know, fussy about it.”    
  
“Ah, I see.”  Solas removed one and turned it slowly to see all sides. How it must have been, to be him, standing at a patisserie counter in the Grand Marche, as good as naked in his true face, and order cakes by the dozens.  “Please, share them with me,” he said, holding it out.   
  
“I haven’t much of a sweet tooth, so no, thank you.”  Blackwall shook his well-combed head and made for the door to the main hall.    
  
There was a second voice Solas could employ, ageless and persuasive, used sparingly to avoid the attention it brought.  But it appeared to be necessary with some people.  It surged like rain turning heavy on a roof, and Blackwall stopped at the sound of it.  
  
Solas said, “It’s customary in Orlais for the gifter to take the first bite, a remnant of a time when poison was a much more commonly used tool in the The Game.” He took two great strides, blocking Blackwall’s retreat. “I insist. It’s tradition.”  
  
Between them lingered the little cake, its icing starting to melt around the points of Solas’s fingers.  
  
“Bollocks. You made it up, cheeky liar. Didn’t know you had it in you.” Blackwall’s smirk was a menace, tangled in his beard or strengthened by it.  “D’you forget it was my homeland once?”  
  
“Not for a moment.”  
  
The look he received for his patience, his steadily encroaching hand with the miraculous little confection on the end of it, was a shade of shyness Solas could not hope to duplicate on any palette.  It was. . .encouraging.  He slipped the cake past Blackwall’s mustache, over the swell of his lower lip, and left it on the tongue beyond.  
  
Countless times Solas had put his fingers into the mouths of wolves.  They never closed their eyes.  His coat prematurely shed, his snarl gentled by sugar and care, this one did.


	7. Sauce - Krem

_for[flutiebear](http://tmblr.co/m-DSJT42kb6E2RzR0mSASdA)_  
  
  
  
If she’s disgusted by the Chargers, she doesn’t show it.  The girl in the tavern, Cherry (of course she is), brings them meals twice a day without complaint, and that’s a miss-able sort of business.  But he knows how to see what’s under that, what’s growing on the underside of mundane.    
  
Cherry doesn’t smile at Grim or Stitches, or even the Bull. Work, polite, no smile.   
  
She smiles for the gravy, though, when she puts the bowl down beside his plate.  Krem’s gravy, the extra, brought without fail every time after the first time he asked for more sauce. His voice had cracked a little, but he never had to ask again.    
  
“Buy her a drink, for fuck’s sake,” says Bull, watching her take away their empty plates.  
  
Krem uses the kitchen rag she left behind to dab up the droplets of sauce left on the table. He needs a pay rise, something beyond a couple of shots of whisky.  
  
“And miss out on all this unresolved tension?” He folds the rag like a handkerchief.  “Not my style.”


	8. How Long - Cullen/f!Trevelyan

_for[thecalamityjess](http://tmblr.co/mwslj8pJTlNphUe6toI-gFQ)_  
  
  
  
  
He brings it up.  How appropriate, then, to have only himself to blame.  
  
 _Just how long have you wanted to do that?_  
  
A fair question.  He might explain a tiny fraction of the whole of it after a month of trying, but, yes. A very long time.  A disproportionate number of his nightmares begin with images like the one he recounts to her by way of an explanation.  

They begin with magic, the air itself twisted and heavy with the stuff, abhorrent. Alluring.  A battle-charred staff, hastily borrowed, split down to its wrapped grip by the wrong user with the right force.  Blood, not dancing out of a purposeful cut but flowing like spilled wine over lips gone slack with unbelieving wonder.  And eyes full of pain. Always that, though something more.   
  
He’d like to say that knowing her has been a small but hard-won victory over terminology: not a nightmare but a dream.  
  
“Since I first saw you.”  When he’d looked on what should have been a familiar torment, and suffered only the fever of admiration.  “A very long time, indeed.”


	9. Animosum (Cullen/Dorian)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for stonelions.

Cullen waited while Dorian read the letter once to himself, and then out loud.   
  
 _How scandalous to think there might be any connection between our house and those fiends of legend! It's not true, of course, and to reassure you on that point, I intend to dedicate my family toward helping the Inquisition in its righteous struggle. Yours in faith, Magister Irian of House Amladaris._  
  
“Yours in faith,” Dorian repeated, snorting. “What absolute hogwash.”  
  
The ravens above them agreed, loudly and with their usual excretory enthusiasm.  Cullen expected the letter to be crumpled and chucked over the railing, but Dorian handed it back.  
  
Cullen nodded.   
  
“This research is valuable, and much appreciated,” he said, and an incurable prickle climbed the back of his neck.  He resisted the impulse to rub it.  “I’ve been asked to retrieve the Liberalum, though, I’m sorry. The Inquisitor would like to return it to the Magisterium as a sign of, well, good faith.”  
  
Dorian continued as if Cullen hadn’t spoken at all, as if he hadn’t remained standing there in the alcove, waiting.  
  
“You know, I do believe some part of this Magister Irian is _proud_ to claim Corypheus as his ancestor.”   
  
He located the Liberalum among his stacks and slid the book under his elbow, but rather than hand it over he leaned against the window.  “Such a fickle thing, pride. Virtue or sin, or some delicious concoction of both?  Show too much in yourself and you’re an insufferable ass, show too little and you languish in obscurity. It appears you don’t gain anything until you give it away.” Dorian traced the edge of a diamond-shaped pane, down to where it joined the metalwork at a point. “Until you’re proud of someone else.”  
  
Cullen cleared his throat.  Drawing himself back from a thousand-mile journey, Dorian opened the Liberalum to a page where two letters were tucked.  With his personal items removed he finally gave the book to Cullen.   
  
“Spiteful, I know, but it’s comforting to think my father will never feel that particular delight.”  
  
It must have been plain on Cullen’s face, in his halting grasp, how he wanted to challenge the assertion. Dorian offered him a familiar tilt of the head, and the sort of smile no son should have ever learned to perfect.  
  
“You disagree? You don’t know the man.”  
  
“I can neither agree nor disagree, for that very reason,” replied Cullen, because he knew the man in front of him.  The book was touch-warm in his hands, as if transferred directly from sunny Minrathous.  He did rub his neck then. “We are not given to flashy accolades here, but you have. . .your work has generated a great deal of pride in at least one corner of Thedas. As cold and noisy as that corner may be.”  
  
They regarded one another in the alcove’s peaceful light, Dorian pleased in his own disbelief, Cullen unable to smile with both sides of his mouth.  _I am. We are. . .of you._  
  
“You sound like Felix,” Dorian said at last. His cheeks dimpled briefly. “He was a rather annoying idealist, too.”  
  
“It’s the truth,” said Cullen, feeling the snowmelt quality of it on his tongue. Avoiding Dorian’s eyes, he looked instead at how the Liberalum’s thick spine fit in his palm, the whole of it much heavier than it looked. “And the truth is, in my experience, rarely ideal.”  
  
Dorian folded his two letters into a tight square, pressing the creases too firmly between his thumbs and fingers.  With a voice soft as ash he said, “On that point we agree.”


	10. Early to rise (Cassandra/Vivienne)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompted by spader7

Her rituals were many and commonplace, especially in the morning when few woke as early as she did to even know she had them. They were dear to her for perhaps that very reason, because a life of service meant that any act purely for one’s self was extraordinary. It was finding her overturned book and reading where she’d left off the night before. Two and a half cups of tea with dark sugar. It was a bath. A brush and braid. A stretch and a stroll. Prayers.   
  
She noticed Vivienne in the garden on one such early morning, less than a week after the Inquisition had claimed Skyhold.    
  
Leaving the garden’s small Andrastian chamber, hugging a novel close to her chest, Cassandra saw Vivienne appear like a fairytale queen in repose, all the wild-grown grasses and crawling roses bent with dew around her.  Ridiculous, and wholly beautiful. On the table sat a lantern and tea service, sheaves of parchment and writing tools, and several small books.  There was also, Cassandra saw with delight, a dish of pastries.    
  
She was drawn to the peace of the garden, to Vivienne’s heavy brocade robe, lined in fur, the steam from her cup and the lamplight on an ink bottle, the dark, serene contours of her face while engrossed in a text.  Cassandra was both envious of this secret routine, and warmed by its familiarity.  Inspired, she stepped out of the shadows into the perfection of Vivienne’s own quiet morning, and was welcomed.  
  
“I wondered if you were ever going to join me.”  
  
“You were expecting me?”  
  
“I take particular interest in anyone who gets an early start to the day.” Vivienne gestured to the empty spot on the bench beside her, and Cassandra sat, book still braced against her chest. “Save for the servants, that means just you and the pet demon,” said Vivienne, pouring tea into a second cup. “I much prefer your company, my dear, as you can imagine.”  
  
“I cannot,” Cassandra replied, opening her book. “But thank you.”  
  
For an hour they sat close, near enough that Cassandra’s resting hand lay on the sensual fur beside Vivienne’s thigh. They read in silence and savored their tea. Vivienne composed letters in elegant, looping script.  Ravenous, Cassandra ate a quince tart in three indelicate bites, self-conscious as she licked her fingers because Vivienne watched her intently but without disgust. Something like the charm of the tarts themselves passed from woman to woman, smiles of new appreciation, a melting of sugar and ripeness.  When the tea cooled, Vivienne wrapped her hands around the pot and brought it back to a gentle, glowing heat.  
  
They continued that way a little longer, reading and writing reports, safely joined behind the curling steam from their cups.  Moonlight surrendered itself to the sun, chilly stillness to a full breeze, and the apple trees shivered off their silver for gold.  Skyhold began to echo with banging doors and shuffling feet, the hum of voices, and even laughter.  Cassandra laid her borrowed quill aside and closed her book, loathe to leave the garden but compelled by other rituals of duty.   
  
“Morning hours are so personal, and most days I have thought myself happy to be alone in them,” she said, pulling her thick sweater tight around her chest. “But this is. . .a most pleasant variation.”  
  
“It is indeed,” Vivienne replied. She took Cassandra’s hand, smoothing her fingertips down into the four junctures of digit and palm. Vivienne’s grip was strong and warm, her eyes direct. “Morning is a uniquely productive time. But there is something to be said for having occasion to lay about in bed.” 


	11. Trinacria (Josie/Cass/Leli)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> writing prompt for tumblr user afragmentcastadrift

Josephine has plans for the vault.    
  
She comes to think of the dark, unused room below her office as a vault before it has a true name or purpose, and asks Leliana and Cassandra to join her in contemplating its uses.  It is, she knows, a fairly transparent excuse for a lady’s escape, to retreat somewhere with access to wine and nothing but Skyhold’s echoes to disturb them.  It would be nice if the vault had a view of the sea, any sea, but the two paintings at either end of the room are as good as windows to far off places.  
  
They bring soft cushions, blankets, an enormous bearskin rug, and a tray from the kitchen heavy with cheese and fruit.  Two bottles into their relaxing evening, Leliana disagrees about the security of the vault.  
  
“There are too many doors, Josie, too many weaknesses,” she says.  
  
“I take it you prefer stashing the Inquisition’s many important treasures in a hundred secret holes.” Josephine drains her cup and refreshes it.  
  
“Of course,” Leliana replies, holding out her own cup for more. “And moving them at irregular intervals.”  
  
“That is clever, actually,” offers Cassandra from the floor, a lioness lounging between two pillars. She snorts, turning her glassy gaze to Leliana. “How many family vaults have your agents infiltrated this month alone?”  
  
“Too many,” Josephine says, before Leliana can.  Her voice must be too soft, strained by too many admonishments, because Leliana grabs her hand to squeeze it.  
  
“You are right to plan for these things,” she says. “Maker knows it’s been too long since we’ve had the opportunity, or the need.”  
  
Josephine allows a burst of warmth reach her face to form a smile. “Then let us plan extravagantly!”  
  
The suggestions roll out like crisp parchment: A salon for music. A private dining hall. A trophy room. An elegant bath.   
  
They talk of tapestries they used to love in homes they haven’t revisited in years. They recall the colored glass of windows so tall they disappeared above the rafters. They eat dark grapes and remember the smell of fresh ink and old wood. A vault it may not be, but the unused room feels safe enough for these memories. And for dreams, Josephine thinks. Perhaps it is necessary that it should remain empty, if not silent.

After another round of suggestions, both frivolous and practical, and more wine, Josephine and Leliana watch Cassandra stand up to pace the length of the vault twice, as if measuring in steps. “It would make an excellent training room during bad weather.  The courtyard becomes unbearably muddy.”  She wobbles, proving a warrior actually can, stepping around the loose stones in the floor.  
  
“Who lights the braziers?” Josephine says suddenly, swallowing.  The vault and the evening around it seems like a dream, a drowsy commedia borne up from the solid stone by a river of wine. It is lovely, achingly so, to think of simpler things here, for a while. She marks a sort of melting darkness around her friends, staring at the firelight bathing Cassandra’s face.  Leliana’s head, tilted up, gives her neck a graceful length, deepened by lines and shadow, and it makes Josephine shiver. “I’ve never seen a single servant in here.”  
  
“Ghosts,” says Leliana.  Her eyes drift close.  
  
“Elves,” Josephine says, and then snaps her fingers. “No! The ghosts of elves.”  
  
“Demons,” says Cassandra bitterly.  She hooks a finger into the metalwork torch on the pillar beside her. “I am forever banging my head on those low-hanging lamps.”  
  
For no reason Josephine can see, moved by unknown music, Cassandra makes a sudden turn, a twirl no courtier would ever recognize, and promptly trips on the edge of the bearskin rug.  With a soft thump, she falls into Leliana’s lap, and to Josephine’s delight the result is not a disgusted noise but a chiming peel of laughter. It rings out from all three of them, filling the vault from painting to painting.  
  
“We can safely rule out ‘ballroom’ as a possibility,” says Leliana.  
  
“Against my better judgement, I am having. . .fun,” Cassandra says with a sigh, leaning back into Leliana’s chuckling chest, accepting the other woman’s arms. And, oh, how they go around her with ease, to hug her close and rock her, without hesitation. Cassandra’s smile, Josephine decides, is the rarest of treasures. “This was a good idea.”  
  
After a moment of lingering on their faces, one above the other, Josephine looks down at her lap.  She is different from them, and will always be so, but in the vault her poise slips closer Leliana’s wildness, her guard nearer to Cassandra’s strength. They have never been more alike, in their limbs and in the wine-hot blood throughout. To Josephine it is as if they are riding the same sea for the first time, perhaps the last, and boldness takes her to the edge of the map.  
  
“I have always wondered, Cassandra,” she says, with a care. “How are your kisses?”  
  
“A fading memory,” replies Cassandra, her voice wry and cracked.  Her half-lidded eyes, bright with fire flickering at their centers, stay on Josephine’s face. “But that is not what you meant.”  
  
She looks as comfortable with Leliana at her back as with a shield settled there.  
  
“No,” says Josephine.  
  
“Then you may see for yourself, if you wish.”  
  
Josephine remembers at the last moment.  Stretched forward and leaning, her lips on Cassandra’s in a fantasy held too long, too covetously, a thunderous rush in her chest, she remembers that she is in the presence of the next Most Holy.  One of them certainly will be. It may be Leliana, the pads of her fingers soft on Josephine’s cheek to tilt, to stroke, a guide in the dark as much as the light.  It may be their fiercest friend, someone who would rather fight a bear than write a poem, but will do both as necessary.  Cassandra’s kiss and her fervor, how her hand kneads Leliana’s thigh, her tongue in firm sympathy with Josephine’s, this is perhaps the promise of the role they will take. The truth of the Divine is not secrets and wine, not silk and steel, but a woman unafraid. With a rush of breath, Josephine breaks the kiss.   
  
“That was most. . .illuminating,” she says. The words feel inadequate and brave, and Leliana snickers at her.  
  
As they part, she watches Leliana lift the back of Cassandra’s hand to her lips, where her smile is not the usual secretive kind.  It speaks to something sweet, waking from dormancy, alluding to a history Josephine doesn’t know between two women she does.  
  
“I think we have discovered the room’s true original purpose,” Leliana says softly. “A poorly-designed lovers’ den.”  
  
Cassandra barks with laughter.  
  
“Imagine the trysts attempted here,” she says. “Freezing drafts and the stink of mold. How romantic.”  
  
Josephine shoves Cassandra’s leg. “I heard no complaints just a moment ago!”  
  
“True.” Cassandra spends a moment worrying her lower lip before pulling Josephine close. Yes, she is Josephine, ambassador and lady. Laying her head in Cassandra’s lap, though, she’s also the more intimate ‘Josie’, and she welcomes being cherished as such.  
  
“This room needs a fireplace,” says Leliana, her nose buried in Cassandra’s hair.  “If we can agree on nothing else, this must be a requirement going forward.”  
  
Whatever comes of the vault, Josephine wants it to remain, in some part, like this night.  She wants it to stay a place of promise, a chamber of necessity for the hearts within. Windows can be broken, doors breached. A painting in a room can be anything, anywhere it wants.  It matters little who lights the braziers here, only that they blaze warm when most needed.


	12. Companion Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what i imagine the inquisitor would give their companions, since we didn't get a gift mechanic in DAI

when i first played DAI, i picked up all these trinkets: an array of toy soldiers, gold and silver earrings, an herbalist’s hand-written manual, lover’s knots, rare stones, etc. and i hauled them around with me everywhere on the off chance i could one day present them as gifts (some of them even have descriptions, as if they were supposed to be a part of a quest).   
  
but after 100 hours i figured they were just not meant to be given away, so i very reluctantly sold them.  
  
so, my darling [afragmentcastadrift](http://tmblr.co/mi2OsRL7ahAQ_KoybNjyWGQ), if i had my choice of gifts to dig up and hand over to my companions and advisors:  
  
  
 **Cassandra**  -  _Mighty Pen_ , a unique sword in the shape of a quill. Inscription: ’ _When one fails you, rely upon the other_.’ Looted from Fearling (maggots) in the Fade. Can be offered to Cassandra as she attempts to write about the events of Here Lies the Abyss. +15 Cunning.  
  
 **Varric**  -  _Unopened cask of_   _Hanged Man Ale (smells skunky)_. Found among ship wreckage at the Storm Coast. Inner Circle quest follows:  _Drinks with Varric_. If the Inquisitor drinks three or more cups they will wake up in Skyhold prison beside a bedraggled ‘Talkative Man.’  
  
 **Solas**  -  _Broken amulet_. Recovered from an elven corpse at the Temple of Sacred Ashes during the prologue. The aubergine crystal is foggy and cracked, as if opened with magic. When the Inquisitor loots the amulet, Solas will mumble  _hahren na melana sahlin_  (the opening line of In Uthenera).  Attempting to offer the amulet to Solas as a gift will result in disapproval.   
  
 **Sera**  -  _Recipe: Chaos Biscuits_. Found on a charred pile of bones in a mine beneath the Forbidden Oasis.  Dense explosive compound compacted into discs, deployed as disruptive bombs. Easy substitutions can be made for actual biscuits.  The party gains an upgrade to grenades.  
  
 **The Iron Bull**  -  _Horn balm_. Can be obtained from Hawke any time after the first conversation on the ramparts, but before Here Lies the Abyss. The Champion will claim it was among the loot won from the Arishok’s defeat (or departure). Iron Bull gains a permanent 2 point boost to Willpower.  
  
 **Blackwall**  -  _Set of paint pots, twelve colors_. Too small for use on large items.  Likely employed for detailed work on figurines and toys. Hand-lathed brushes included. Found in an overturned wagon in Lady Shayna’s Valley.  If Blackwall/Rainier is allowed to stay, his completed griffon hobby horse appears more vibrant.  
  
 **Vivienne**  -  _Music Box.  C_ an be purchased from merchant in Val Royeaux after traveling to the Ghislain estate for the last time. Plays a complex tune, missing one chord, no discount. Song plays periodically from the upstairs balcony in Skyhold. The cooldown on Vivienne’s Fade Step is reduced.  
  
 **Dorian**  -  _Candied Dates_.  Looted from Venatori spellbinder in Coracavus. If in a relationship they can be given directly, resulting in a kiss, and the open box can be seen atop a stack of books in his corner of the library. If not in a relationship they are offered (or sold) to Varric to help him pay off losing a bet to Dorian.  In either case, Dorian greatly approves.  
  
 **Cole**  -  _Bright feathers_. Found in a mage satchel in the Arbor Wilds, just outside the temple. Once given, they can be seen tucked into Cole’s hat. +5 to Constitution. After the hat upgrade, ambient NPC chatter around Skyhold will mention Cole by name.  
  
 **Leliana**  -  _Heeled Shoes in Blue Silk_ , of course.  Looted from a chest in a locked room in Halamshiral. They appear to have been carefully re-soled several times. Unlocks  _Leliana’s Song II_  advisor scene (repeatable, in Orlesian or common tongue).  
  
 **Cullen**  -  _Control Rod for Unspecified Golem_. Reward from the Hero of Ferelden after War Table mission. Upon receiving it, the control rod appears on Cullen’s bookshelf.  Unlocks  _Investigate Honleath_  advisor scene.   
  
 **Josephine**  -  _Baybreeze_ , graceful plant with small purple blossoms that smell faintly of the ocean.  Reward for using Josephine’s tactic of sending the Raiders for the war table mission Upon the Waking Sea. After receiving it, the potted plant appears on the windowsill of Josie’s office. Unlocks  _The Montilyet Fleet_  advisor scene.


	13. A thousand little stings - Dorian, Fiona

“Vint,” said Dorian, with misapplied pride.

“Traitor,” Fiona offered, with gloomy vehemence.

Her hands were not just diminutive, he noticed, but immaculate as well.

“Blood mage.”

“Oh, I’ve gotten that, too,” she said. Under her careful magic, the tiny paper cuts along his palm receded, numbed and pinked without puckering, along with the softly fading marks criss-crossing his fingers. She was an absolute marvel with healing. He barely felt a thing. Her concentration didn’t show, though it was evident in her voice as she continued their game.  

“Coward.”

“Good one.” Dorian chuckled. “How about-”

“This is a terrible way to pass the time,” declared Fiona.  She ran her small hands once more over Dorian’s palm, icy blue tendrils of light leaking and thinning into nothingness, and then released him. “I think this is all I can do for you.  I hope it helped.”

“Immeasurably,” he replied, flexing.  In his restored hand, she pressed a tiny pot, which he opened and sniffed with care. It smelled neither potent nor comforting, nor of anything in particular. A pale yellow mystery.  “What’s this, a balm? Tell me I’m not holding some backwoods Southern recipe made of mushrooms and bear fat.”

“Beeswax.  For the tips of your fingers,” Fiona sighed. “If you intend to continue your studies with such enthusiasm, the wax will help you turn pages faster, and with fewer injuries.”

He capped the pot and gave her a smile, one that he relied upon for gratitude and apologies in equal measure.  Allowing himself some immodesty, it was an effective smile.  But she didn’t return it.  In fact, as he studied her face, he could not remember having seen so much as a smirk from her in all their time at Skyhold.

“Dorian, your last insult, what was it?”

The corners of his mouth fell, just a fraction. He hadn’t the strength to lie, to conjure brightness.  Perhaps she’d taken that in her ministrations, as she took his pain.  Most of it, at any rate.

“Disappointment.  It was the only thing that came to mind,” he said. “Though, according to the rules it wouldn’t have counted, and I would have lost the game.”

Fiona did smile then, a thing fit for weeping, and went to the railing that circumnavigated the library.  She clutched it lightly in her hands. Such small hands.

“Is the hurt lesser or greater for being unspoken? I can’t tell.” She looked up at the dust motes and dark, downy feathers drifting in the tower. “But no, as you say, it’s not technically an insult.”

Dorian held the little pot of wax tighter, and sparks of stubborn pain returned to his cuts.

“My dear Grand Enchanter, technicalities are everything.”


	14. A sleepless night - Vivienne, Cassandra

It was reputedly a place of power, the Fade.  A demon’s nest, yes, dangerous and unpredictable, but to be there physically was to bathe in the nacre of magic itself.  Or so scholars thought.  Vivienne had not dreamed she would ever be in a position to offer evidence to the contrary.

And dreams were an unfortunate problem now.

Afterward, at the sprawling Adamant camp, she slept not at all.  To do so was unthinkable.  In the lamplight of her tent, she watched the shifting shadows and mourned for what they lost in the Fade, and for what they found. Not the memory-rich knowledge, like the scent of orange peel under the nails, but a rank, insufferable shroud of malaise.  Once worn, it proved difficult to slip from one’s shoulders.  _Power_ , it hissed with every movement,  _but not for you_.

Vivienne clucked her tongue, annoyed. She drew a heavy robe around herself and left her tent full of self pity in search of more appropriate company.  Following the few points of light that remained strong for the late hour, she found herself in the Inquisition’s main tent, where Cassandra sat at the strategy table.  A mess of parchment and two ink bottles, one full and one empty, were spread out before her.

“Am I disturbing you?” Vivienne closed the flap behind her. “It is a night for reflection and grief, but not, apparently, for sleep.”

Cassandra sighed and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.

“I have written hundreds of words about what happened, thousands, and still I can’t be sure they are the right ones,” she said, and hunched over her report again. “That is why I can’t sleep.  And you?”

“My reasons are of a far more tangible variety. Attended by nightmares so real they leave scars.” Vivienne released a lengthy breath. “I am afraid to dream, Cassandra. Of all the silly things.”

“It is not silly to be cautious.” She didn’t look up from her pages, so comfortably correct was her estimation. But when she did, her features softened. “Sit with me, if you like. I’m sure I will be up for hours.”

Vivienne took a seat at the table. A solid thing of such utilitarian workmanship was unlikely to lull her into drowsiness, which was the smallest of comforts in its own way.  While Cassandra struggled in her writing, Vivienne produced a deck of gold-foil cards from the pocket of her robe and began a game of Tour Solitaire.

After two short hands, she stretched her arms and back. No nightmares this evening, but what of the next? The fear of it was shapeless and chilling, and Vivienne tried to remember what unbothered sleep had been like.  It might be forced with potions, she knew so many ways, skills that had never been necessary before.  

Cassandra bent stiffly over her work, deep creases of thought threatening permanence between her brows. She yawned, and broke Vivienne’s languorous study of her face.  Reshuffling, Vivienne started the tower again. “Do you think Justinia slept well?” she asked.

“I cannot say,” replied Cassandra. “But I doubt it, at least not toward the…end.”

“We are well-suited to the position, you and I,” said Vivienne. She laid the empress upon the shield and made a quick count.  “It shouldn’t be a contest, of course, but I can think of few other women in the whole of Thedas with our rather substantial qualities.”

The tight scratching of the quill stopped.  Vivienne looked up from her cards to find Cassandra’s cheek resting against her fist, eyes blinking slowly in resistance…to sleep, to melancholy, to compliments.  She pointed with the feather-end of her quill, brushing it over an épée card that Vivienne had left unplayed.

“And yet three candidates reside in the same castle,” Cassandra said, a wry smile turning her face merry, and a touch sad.

“Proof,” said Vivienne, quietly, tracing the image of the elegant sword with the tip of her fingernail. “That the Inquisition was, and remains, precisely what was needed.”

Cassandra reached over and moved the épée to the top of the tower.  Her hand came to rest atop Vivienne’s.  “Of that I am more certain than ever.”


	15. Keep coming back to the same place - Cullen

_The repetitions, the aching ticks that make a life are these:_

  * The middle finger of his right hand, homesick for the scar above his lip, returning a dozen times a day, absently present, until one is harder and the other softer.  
  

  * The ruddy column of his neck, creased along the back. Four invisible impressions worn there, beacons of bone muscled with doubt, where two disparate sets of fingers are called to different duties. To hide, and to guide.  
  

  * The hole in the roof is just a hole. Not decay, but a ferocious act of life scraped out of the sky, air in and air out, filling up the chambers of a chest, of a castle.  
  

  * The hinges are chirpy and tarnished. They break long before the box is shattered.   
  

  * His teeth are a cascade of blue stones falling from his mouth, smashed to powder on the floor. His friends are logs on the water, timber cut and forgotten, rotting where no swift currents can catch them. His robes are not his at all, but they know him, and catch fire all the same. His sword is bent like a willow, hilted in the sternum, but will not break, only bring him closer. There are shards of glass where his voice should be, and they scream until nothing but sand remains. His teeth are a cascade of blue stones…  
  

  * The book beside the bed has no bookmark, nor is one required. It opens with a gasp, yields to the weight of a single scene, two pages having spent their hours and their mismatched words pressed tight together, now stretch out side by side, sinking to stillness on a broken spine.  
  

  * A single pair of Fereldan gloves. Rubbed hard with the force of resting restraint, of years shaped on a pommel until the cup of the left palm turns thin and smooth as skin. So soft that the smallest thing can be felt, down to the heft of a coin.   
  

  * The threadbare patch on the rug beneath the desk, marking a walk around the world. Eighty some odd separate campaigns against monsters, both magical and mundane. One hundred and thirty-seven diplomatic asides. Twelve assassination attempts. Five hundred relics safely escorted. Six bridges repaired, and two built where none existed. Tens of thousands dead, some undead. Countless thousands unsure, but living.  Half a million steps on an old Antivan rug, covering the distance between a desk and a bookcase, spanning a continent, dividing it in too many places, and filling it up with a story called  _Purpose_.




	16. Too good to be true, probably is - Sera, Solas

“If you’ve come to vandalize the fresco I hope you brought more than arrows to save you.”

He’s not looking up at her, crammed between the library bannisters, so he doesn’t see her tongue sticking out. Waste.  

“Wouldn’t do that. Again,” she says. “Just looking is all. Looking’s not a crime now, is it?”

He’s painting, starting on the floor this time. Always does it in the dead of night, all in one go, slapping on that stinking plaster. The room smells like ash and wet chalk until it dries, takes days. She likes the paints, though. They’re pretty, rich-like, before they go on.

“Looking at what, exactly?” says Solas.

“The shine off your head, for one.”

Painting, working on his knees, but no stopping and no talking. Right, it’s all business once he starts, and her fun won’t start if he won’t play.  So, she drops down to the scaffold, crouching over to see him.

“Fine, I’ve got a question. You love those, right?” She waits, but hasn’t gotten any better at it after all this time.  “No good having all the answers in that bulgy, fade-y brain if no one ever asks.”

“Quite so,” he says, a tickle of a pause. Got him. “Ask, but I have to keep working.”

She opens her mouth, and the question sits there, lost.  On the blank wall he’s sketched the picture, a whole night’s work laid out in nothing but grey lines. She makes out the temple, the wilds creeping and the water flowing, and below it his head in the real world, bent low like no one’s ever allowed to see him, not really. He adds a milky slate blue across the bottom of the plaster, working fast with a broad brush.  

“That maybe-goddess, Mythal, that weird temple full of ancient, snooty elves,” says Sera, watching how the sketch lines disappear and then come back under the thin paint. “It’s all real. Or was once. And now it’s just a story, but with too many pages missing, bound up like it should still make sense.  It doesn’t.”

More brushing, deeper color where he layers it.

“That is certainly one interpretation. No less insightful than that of the Dalish,” says Solas to the wall. “But I haven’t heard a question so far.”

“You don’t believe in Andraste or the Maker, but you believe in her.”

She sees it happen, a crack in the calm, where his light brushstrokes go heavy and wrong, in the space of a breath.

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because…” He wants to stop, she can tell, maybe walk off or yell at her, but he’s racing the plaster for time. And Solas always gets quiet when he lies. “Faith is personal, Sera. Its complexity can’t be summarized by-”

“Yeah, I’m not buying it, smarty-farts. You’re not really a ‘faith’ sort of man, are you?” She swings her legs against the ladder, a bit of a racket that rustles the birds up top.  “No, don’t think so. Sort of man, though, that might be right.”

Hard stop. He steps back from the wall.

“Sort of …?” When he finally looks up at her, it feels like she’s standing at the edge of a well. No bottom, all black, better left alone. “What are you implying?”

“Know what, forget it. Wasn’t even the question I came for,” she says in a rush, and slides down the ladder. “Thing is, I’m in a jam with Leliana, and I shouldn’t have done the thing I did, but it’s done, and now I’m on the hook.”

Heartbeats go by. She turns for the door when it seems like he won’t bother, but Solas dips the big brush again, and wets the wall with blue. “And?”

“Is there a …spell, or a potion, to make someone forgive you? Let the old bygones be, that kind of thing?” But shit, there’s always . .“ _Not_ blood magic.”

Half the wall is faded water now, past the shoulders and going for the ears.  Up against it, Solas looks like he’ll drown, but he’s got the brush.  And he just keeps painting it higher.

“Would the world be a better place if such a thing was possible?”

Yes and no, but more,  _uh, yeah!_ At least on her side of it.

“A bloody question for an answer,” she mutters. “Figures.”


	17. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies - f!Hawke/Varric

Adamant sat several hours behind them, the Imperial Highway sat several hours ahead, and Varric… sat on his hands.  Because if he didn’t, if he let himself, he’d use them to signal the driver to veer off from the caravan and head for the hills.  Hawke wouldn’t know until they were miles away.  She’d been asleep since they rolled away from the damned fortress.  
  
The Warden banner had been folded neatly when she’d accepted it from the Inquisitor.  Now it was a kid’s stuffed toy, hugged to wrinkles in her arms on the floor of the wagon.  At least she hadn’t used it as a pillow.  
  
Varric eased the banner out of her grip and she stirred.   
  
“Are we stopping?”  
  
“It’ll be a little while. I just wanted…if it’s all the same, I’d rather you were awake for this part.”  
  
“The part where I’m seasick on dry land?  By all means.”  
  
“Take the highway,” he said, swallowing.  The banner was easy enough to re-fold, there wasn’t much of it left.  He fished her pack out of the jumble of supplies and tucked the faded cloth inside. “I know you, the marshes seem like a terrific shortcut, and a great way to avoid Orlesian nobles, but please stick to the road.”  
  
Hawke yawned.  
  
“Blast! In all the rush to save the world, again, I forgot to pack my waders.  So, the marshes are right out.”  She stretched, but didn’t sit up, only looked at him with half-lidded eyes.  
  
“Thank the Maker.”  
  
“I think I’m done with that part, actually.”  
  
“Well, I’m not.”

He touched her face, just as the wagon bounced stiffly over a rut, and nearly poked out her eye. It counted, it was romantic, for them anyway, but only because she laughed. Because they’d learned to never, ever expect more.  But Varric had some fight left in him, years of it, for the right things, and he wanted her to know that she’d always be one of them.  
  
He took a deep breath, the only kind he’d been living on since the last time he saw her, but before the words could form, Hawke fixed him with a bright, wild look.  
  
“Tell me about the Winter Palace,” she said, and reached out to pull him down beside her. “Better yet, tell me about that dragon! Did Cassandra really take it down all by herself?”  
  
 _Tell me about Haven, about the ball-numbing trek through the snowy mountains, and all of Skyhold’s ghosts, and every new place we’ll never see together. Tell me about everything under the sun, but don’t you dare ask. Don’t you dare._  
  
There were no questions left between them, though, not for a long time, just wishes without the common sense to be fanciful.  They were what you asked if you were lucky enough to get old:  _Am I ever going to hold your hand again?_  
  
Varric rubbed his mouth and told her what she wanted, could do no less.  “Alright. But even you won’t believe half the shit we’ve seen.”  
  
An hour flowed over them, carving Varric’s voice down to grit with every story, loosening Hawke’s grip on his arm, until they shuddered limply at each bump in the road. An hour during which the scenery outside the wagon sloped lower and flatter, and she forgot to smile sadly, at least around the eyes.  But that was a habit always inherited by someone else, someone close, and it crept up on Varric.  Against his very nature, the font of anecdotes and observations eventually ran dry, and he curled into her side on the floor of the wagon.  
  
They were quiet for the remainder, except for a mumbling moment when Hawke kissed his nose and said, “If I weren’t so knackered,” before falling dead asleep again.  
  
The caravan slowed near Velun, where the Imperial Highway shot out of the countryside to the north and south.  The Inquisition’s legion of horses, wagons, and siege engines took a wide arc to the right, while Hawke’s driver and a ragged contingent of Warden riders broke off and eased onto the road in the opposite direction.   
  
Varric dropped out of the wagon, onto unsteady legs.  He took Hawke’s hand in that awkward way, gallantry impeding practicality, and she too wobbled when she hit land.    
  
 _Don’t you dare._  The strength of it plain in her wet eyes and in the dust coating her hair.  
  
He hugged her instead.  
  
She held his face.  
  
“You know where to find me.”  
  
“I… know where to find you.”


	18. Another nail in the coffin - Adaar/Dorian

In the breath immediately following his beef-witted assemblage of words, Dorian panicked, and the evidence of that panic ran straight for his face.    
  
Adaar froze, his lips slipped away from Dorian’s skin, leaving it haunted and wet, and his fingers stopped moving in the most excruciating way. What had been the inspiring sight of a lover on his knees became a moment of sheer, unending mortification for Dorian.  
  
Of all the things to say while a certified hero had you twisting deliciously like laundry on a wire.  
  
A panicked expression was death to this sort of bawdy intimacy.  Even the most handsome man couldn’t pull it off.  Dorian was one of those, succumbing to the undeniable truth of the other.  And he was nothing if not exemplary.  
  
 _I love you._    
  
What a ruinous end to what had promised to be an act of physical sublimity on his person.  _I…love…you._  
  
As naked a sentiment as a portrait in his pocket, just the worst kind of gasping declaration. Varric would shit himself with glee.  His tent wasn’t far, perhaps he was taking notes.  
  
“You do?”  Worry was unfairly becoming on Adaar.  
  
There was nothing for it, Dorian’s panic grew a thousand misshapen arms and legs and there was no escape, no more superb mouth on his-  
  
“As an expression, you see. In a manner of speaking.” Dorian squinted against the sound of his own withering poise.  

Adaar pursed his lips.  For all their time as companions, Dorian had known him to be practical, and insulting, occasionally solemn, and briefly overjoyed, but Adaar had never been downright impish. Until the moment Dorian provided him a reason to break new ground.  
  
“You love me, as  _a manner of speaking_?” He folded his hands in his lap, his  _nude_  lap, his whole body composed of muscle and skin that was impervious to gracelessness.  “I should use that on our next visiting diplomat. ‘The weather is unseasonably cold, Marquis, do remember that I love you.’”  
  
He smiled with pure delight, inviting Dorian to kick out a few of his teeth.  
  
“Never-bloody-mind!”    
  
There was an escape after all.  Dorian yanked his leggings over his hips, thrust his arms into a coat of indeterminate ownership, and burst out of the tent as if it were on fire.   
  
Dozens of blind, barefoot steps later, he stood at the edge of an outcropping, overlooking the ceaseless slither of sand and wind that moved across the Wastes, even at night.  He was scarcely alone with his discomfiture, though.  He had the sickening chime of an ocularum for company, so very helpful in his present state.  Would that he were similarly done with everything in the world except to observe and appreciate shiny things in the distance.  Dorian scrubbed his face.   
  
 _I_ fucking _love you._     
  
It could have been immeasurably worse.  He could have gone his whole life saying it at the drop of a hat, without ever knowing the exquisite terror of  _meaning it_. He could have been, in plainer terms, his father’s son.  
  
A warm presence materialized behind him, also barefoot.  Adaar had managed fewer clothes than Dorian, however, fleeing the wreckage of their lovemaking with just a blanket and his damnable composure.  
  
“This is it, you know,” Dorian said.  He swept an arm across the panorama. “This scenic overlook is the exact spot at which the question of my parents’ choices becomes purely academic.“ Chilled, he huddled into himself. “It’s monumental, someone should be writing this down.”  
  
Adaar nodded.  
  
“Academically speaking, I love you, too,” he said, a rich voice for a simple truth. “Thank you for letting me cart you out to a desert at the edge of the world so we could clear that up.”  
  
It could have been disastrous, and there was certainly still time for it to become so.  But a gamble was far sweeter in the long run, wasn’t it? Surely.   
  
Dorian sighed. “Welcome to the Hissing Wastes, where comfort and reason go to die.”  
  
“It isn’t all bad.”  Adaar opened his blanket, and Dorian was surprised. Not by the temptation of his bareness, but by his own expanding desire for more. Of everything.   
  
“It’s freezing,” Dorian declared. He shuffled under Adaar’s arm and was warm in an instant.  “Why is a desert  _freezing_?”


	19. A blue tin kettle - Blackwall (post-game)

As the month closes, sleep comes easier, longer, deeper than he can ever remember. Rainier sleeps well on the ship, even with the Waking Sea shoving ungently against the hull, and in dreams he is as honest as circumstance allows.  A version of Blackwall, finally, more man than legend.  
  
He can’t write letters on the ocean.  Soon enough, there won’t be a need.  
  
“You’re not half bad on deck, good sea legs.”  The cups she offers are chippy and undecorated.  The tea in them will be stiff as the sails themselves, with a finger of whiskey in each.  
  
“Noticed that, did you?” he replies. “Just repaying the kindness.  An official voyage would have been twice as long, and half as interesting.”  
  
“We are a fun bunch, aren’t we?  But Kirkwall is a drop in the bucket,” she says, stretching legs dark as four fathoms and just as long. “You should see what we have planned for Estwatch.”  
  
Travel the currents, salt in their teeth, gold on the horizon, old songs echoing in sleep.  An abrupt aching for stillness overtakes him, and he’s warmed with a swig of tea.  
  
“Tempting, admiral.  But I’ve something, someone, at the other end of this trip,” he says. “It wouldn’t do to keep her waiting.”  
  
“Ah, is she the port or the storm?”  
  
“She’s…well, she’s both.”  
  
“My favorite kind.”   
  
She pours again from the kettle, battered blue cozied with red cloth.


	20. Submersion in cool water - Merrill, Flemeth

They were awfully jumbled, the voices in the Well.  And the cold water swirling from her toes to her knees didn’t help.    
  
Merrill listened, tried to sort them, to line them up like writing but they skittered apart. Leaves in a breeze. Some were gentle and others full of force, some flew through her head with songs on their breath, and others spoke plain and low. All held instant familiarity to her, as true answers always did.  
  
Mostly, they told her things she already knew about herself.  
  
 _Tel’abelas._  
  
“Why should I be?” she demanded.  
  
Pride made a poor companion, they all told her -other voices, not of the Well but real ones with the faces of friends- they told her so many times that she’d chosen evil, whatever that was. Mistaken and misguided, they said. But, pride wasn’t all bad.  It had brought her here, to the knowing of all things. She’d let it go to step in the water, and missed pride’s sharp hand not a bit.  
  
The voices were icy as mountain wind, though, and Merrill shook in her own skin.  
  
 _Mala suledin nadas_ , they whispered.  _Endure, if you’re worthy_.  
  
“Emma ir abelas,” Merrill cried, because the ageless ache of it was simply too real to ignore.    
  
A single voice answered back to her, whisking the confusion of others away.  It was old, shrewd, bristling with depth.  The tallest tree saw the most, after all.  
  
 _I know, da’len_ , it said, then singing, a lullaby and a command.  _Ma garas mir renan, ara ma'athlan vhenas_.  
  
“Asha’belannar!” said Merrill, eyes full of new light, overjoyed. “It’s good to see you again. So very good.”  
  
“No bended knee?” The goddess laughed. “You’ve learned much since we last met. Well done.”  
  
“Oh, well, I would have, but the water is terribly cold.”


End file.
